(STUDY ON PROVERBS 1-7), PART 1 - GOD PROVIDES

When God told the first man ever on the earth - Adam - to go forth and multiply, Adam had no role model but God. It could get absolutely NO better than this, because our Creator and Heavenly Father is the most perfect Father ever.

Look at the Goodness of God the Father to Adam:

-  God created Adam. 

-  God gave Adam life.

-  God provided everything Adam needed to survive

-  God gave Adam a perfect home to live in, where everything was in harmony in the Garden of Eden.

-  God gave Adam a mission to accomplish, and a work to do

-  God gave Adam a beautiful wife for companionship, love and to help him oversee the Garden of Eden.

This was enough for any man to do. Yet Adam allowed his wife to negotiate with a snake, sin and then willingly went along with it. Later on, after they were expelled from perfection, Adam paid the price when one of this first sons, killed the other one. Cain murdered Abel over jealousy.

The Lord, our Good, Good Father, had to punish this original sin, which brought death, degradation and destruction into the world.  These continue until this day. God still provided for His now wayward people, in spite of the massive Flood from Noah times, which changed the atmospheric and living conditions so much, that  humans could no longer physically survive more than 100 years, down from 800-900 years pre-flood.

Even with the foolish, sinful and evil ways of all humankind since Adam and Eve’s expulsion from Paradise,  the Lord continued to provide for all people, of all nations. He has provided food and the rain to grow and produce. He has provide work, through the various tasks and effort needed to provide and maintain the daily, temporal needs of all humans – even those who hate or ignore Him. He has provided the ability to comprehend the workings of the human body, so medicine can help everyone, with a good lifestyle. He has provided Wisdom, through His Holy and Eternal Word – the Bible, which has, is now and will always provide, the solid underpinning for a life well lived.

This instruction can be found all through the Scriptures, the very Oracle of God. The Apostle Paul listed and rattled them off, in clear present tense, in the New Testament.  He gave the clearest of road maps to the Faithful about how we should conduct ourselves. 

The Book of Proverbs, in essence, provides the Wisdom required to comprehend these commands from Paul.  Without the ability to discern what is expected of us, following the teachings of the Apostle Paul (who was directly guided by Christ and the Holy Spirit to give them) would be simply an attempt at good works. Godly Wisdom is absolutely and 180 degrees in the other direction than Worldly Wisdom. Where do we find such a unique "wisdom"? The Bible directs us to start in the Book of Proverbs.  In this short series, we will look at the many times the Lord provides the reasoning, hence the wisdom, of certain life choices. This kind of teaching is in short supply, in these modern times. Let's spread the word.

Godly Wisdom begins with the "fear of the Lord".

Worldly Wisdom comes from the wisdom and confusing, contradictory philosophies of man.

Proverbs 1:5 "A wise man will hear and increase in learning and a man of understanding will acquire wise counsel.

Proverbs 1:7 "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction".

THE "3:16" VERSES OF THE BIBLE. PART 1: GOD SEES AND DELIVERS

GENESIS 3:16 AND EXODUS 3:16

From super fans holding up signs at football games to Vacation Bible School bible verse drills, the entire planet knows John 3:16 (….for God so loved the world…). So, what about the other 65 books of the Bible? Most of them do have “3:16” verses which while not as packed with Eternal Impact for the believer, carry equally significant weight for the Christian! 

It is absolutely beneficial to our spiritual growth to do a study of these verses for many reasons. I discovered the reasons myself while doing precisely this same exercise. While not every book of the sixty six (66) Books of Canon (The Bible) has three chapters or even a 16th verse, the majority of those I found all have a theme relevant to the Christian life!

In some cases, the "3:16" verse is self-explanatory. In many cases, we have to read the previous or the "17" verse in context to get the full meaning. Where the verse is plain, we will no try to over-explain. But they will be kept as focused as possible in this new series, so as to get the full measure of what God is saying, in these passages of Scripture.

To be clear, the original manuscripts were NOT written in Chapter and Verse! The original Old Testament was written in Hebrew and only put in verses in the 15th century by a Jewish Rabbi. The English Bible was divided into chapters by the Archbishop of Canterbury in the 13th century and less than 160 years, the great and first Wycliffe English Bible made it permanent. The division into chapter and verse occurred to make the great Words of God more understandable to the world.

This has occurred and the Lord has used The Greatest Book Ever Written to change, transform and rescue lives ever since. Here we go:
ORIGINAL SIN BRINGS THE FIRST CONCEPT OF JUDGMENT
Genesis 3:16:

To the woman He said,

“I will greatly multiply

Your pain in childbirth,

In pain you will bring forth children;

Yet your desire will be for your husband,

And he will rule over you.”

While feminists may not find this particularly appealing, in fact it was Eve - the first woman - who negotiated with a serpent, believed him over God and fell for the lie. Adam was ultimately held responsible by God for this sin, but look at the hammer coming down on all women for all time due to Eve listening to Lucifer and eating forbidden fruit! 

Here we have the first introduction of PAIN into the human equation. Pain was not meant for to happen. We brought it on ourselves. This was just the beginning of all kinds of trauma and pain because Eve's first offspring and son - CAIN, an angry and jealous man increased this Pain by killing his own brother Abel.

LESSON: DISOBEDIENCE HAS CONSEQUENCE WAY BEYOND THE IMMEDIATE AND CAN AFFECT GENERATIONS YET TO BE BORN.

GOD CARES ABOUT THOSE IN DESPAIR
EXODUS 3:16 "Go and gather the elders of Israel together and say to them, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, has appeared to me, saying, “I am indeed concerned about you and what has been done to you in Egypt".

Sure, Eve brought pain and suffering into the World, but our God is the God of Mercy, Grace and Compassion and His love endureth for a life time. The Jews were an oppressed and mistreated people for 400 years as slaves in Egypt after the death of the great Joseph and his benefactor Pharaoh. The time of their pending departure and entry to the Promised Land. In Exodus 3:16, God Himself said He was "INDEED concerned and knew of their hurt and persecution". He was about to send the Great Deliverer - Moses.

LESSON: WHAT YOU OR I MAY BE GOING THROUGH IS NOT NEWS TO GOD. HE SEES THE PAIN, DEPRESSION AND LOST NATURE OF HIS PEOPLE NOW, AS HE DID 1000, 2000 0R 4000 YEARS AGO. HE IS INDEED CONCERNED, CARING, COMPASSIONATE AND LOVING AND WILL RESPOND WITH DELIVERANCE - ONE WAY OR ANOTHER. 

UPROOTING THE TREE OF TEMPTATION

BY DR. RICHARD HERBERT 

(GUEST WRITER)

Overcoming temptation is a subject of interest to every Christian, as it’s a subject that affects us all. 

We probably know that the Bible contains a number of guiding and encouraging  scriptures to help us in overcoming, but we may not be aware of biblical analysis of the cycle of temptation and sin that grows from “seed” to burgeoning “tree,” if we let it.  It’s an understanding found in both the Old and New Testaments and one we can apply.

The clearest analysis of the growth of sin is found in the first chapter of the Book of James which describes the genealogy or “family tree” of every temptation leading to transgression: “… each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death” (James 1:14-15).

If we analyze it, the growing “tree” of temptation that James elaborates can help us understand how we can break sin’s growth before it breaks us:
Seed:  “each person is tempted…” – Exposure to temptation
Roots:  “each person is … dragged away by their own evil desire” – Considering the temptation
Trunk:  “and enticed”  – Intellectual acquiescence
Branches: “then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin” – Submission to sin
Fruit: “…sin … gives birth to death” – The eventual result of sin

The pattern is a universal one.  We see it as early as the story of the first sin in Genesis 3 when the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” became the focus of Eve’s attention:“When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it” (Genesis 3:6).

Dividing up this example of the tree of temptation, we see exactly the same pattern:
Seed:  “the woman saw …” – Exposure to temptation
Roots:  “… the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye” – Considering the temptation
Trunk:  “and also desirable for gaining wisdom” – Intellectual acquiescence
Branches: “she took some and ate it” – Submission to sin
Fruit: “when you eat from it you will certainly die” (Genesis 2:17) – The eventual result of sin

Once we understand the structure of this figurative tree of transgression, we can see that the only logical place to stop the growth of temptation is at the beginning – by killing the “seed” before the “roots” begin to grow.
  
Physical seeds need the right conditions in order to germinate.  Spiritually we must do everything we can to make sure that the conditions are not in our lives for the seeds of sin to continually grow.  In some circumstances, of course, we cannot help but be exposed to temptation – its potential is present in so much of modern society. But we can prepare our environment to avoid a good deal of it.

Gardeners wanting to avoid the growth of weeds regularly use “pre-emergent” herbicides to stop the germination of those unwanted plants, and our regular use of the spiritual “pre-emergents” of prayer, study and other spiritual disciplines can have exactly the same effect on temptation.

But whenever we are exposed to temptation, it is imperative that we kill the “roots” before they take a firm hold.  It is always easier to pull up the small roots of a sapling than to cut down a grown tree trunk, and easier to cut the trunk than to try to cut off every branch.  It is the one unfailing principle that can help us overcome temptation more than any other – the earlier we attempt to end the growth of temptation, the more likely we are to succeed.

Transferring the analogy to actual everyday life means throwing everything we can at temptation the moment it begins to grow within our minds.  That can mean asking God’s help in immediate prayer (Matthew 6:13), putting something else that is attractive but good into our minds to replace the wrong thoughts (Philippians 4:8), or simply getting ourselves into a different environment till the temptation passes (2 Timothy 2:22-24).

Sometimes, all three strategies are necessary to help us stop the growth of a sin in our lives. But the encouraging thing is that just as there is no tree that cannot be felled, there is no temptation that cannot be overcome if we are willing to attack it – before it grows.  
DR. HERBERT'S WEBSITES:
TACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
LIVING WITH FAITH